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Reply-default etiquette (was Re: KISS gpg)



On 2019-10-31 at 11:36, Nicolas George wrote:

> Andrew McGlashan (12019-11-01):
> 
>> btw doesn't "reply list" work for you?  I get all list messages
>> okay.
> 
> If you do not want to be on copy, use the standard reply-to header
> to specify it, just like me. Senders should not be expected to do
> something special for normal answers, correct behaviour should be the
> default for lists as well as private mail; with reply-to correctly
> configured it is.

IMO, the correct behavior should indeed be the same for lists as for
private mail: reply to the source from which you received the message.

If you received it directly from the person who composed it, reply to
that person's address by default.

If you received it indirectly via a mailing list, reply to the mailing
list's address by default.


I am subscribed to dozens of mailing lists, and have been active on most
or all of them at various points in time. To get reply behavior to be
correct on all of them, I would need to set Reply-To to a different
value for each one.

I know of no way to get a mail client to automatically set Reply-To
differently depending on what message is being replied to; I could of
course contrive some method, although implementing such a method on any
particular mail client might be nontrivial, but it seems unreasonable to
expect people to do that. Expecting people to set those same headers
manually on every message seems even more unreasonable.

It should not be the responsibility of every sender to contrive some
configuration to automatically set Reply-To (or other non-default)
headers correctly for every different mailing list. If the responder's
mail client isn't intelligent enough to detect that it's replying to a
message which came from a mailing list and set the default To:
appropriately on that basis, then it should be the responder's
responsibility to do that manually - e.g. by clicking "reply to list"
rather than "reply" or "reply all".

(IMO the correct behavior should be chosen automatically by "reply", and
there should be separate "reply to sender", "reply to all", and "reply
to list" options in the client. I don't know of anything which
implements that, however.)

-- 
   The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man.         -- George Bernard Shaw

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